Technology trends 2017: Here are the top frameworks

Earlier this year we invited you to fill out our annual survey — its aim was to find out which technology topics will be especially important for you in 2017. Today’s the day! It’s time for the big unveiling.

Technology trends 2017

One month, 900+ respondents. Our annual technology trends survey came to an end last month, so now it’s time to find out what topics will be especially important for you in 2017.

UI frameworks

HTML5 is the winner of this year’s most popular UI frameworks. If we combined the “very interested” and “interested” votes, we would have a total of 81.4 percent respondents rooting for HTML5. The runner-up is React.js and the third spot is occupied by Angular.

JAXenter survey 2017: UI technologies results

What’s up with JavaFX?

Almost 30 percent of the respondents are interested in using JavaFX this year. Although it managed to score No.5 spot, it didn’t have last year’s impact. In 2016, 36,6 percent of the respondents were willing to give JavaFX a chance.

JAXenter survey 2016: UI technologies results

One of the most obvious changes is the fact that all three Java UI kits have lost to JavaScript. In the programming languages results, we mentioned that JavaScript has gained a foothold in the world of Java. These results prove that JavaScript is gaining momentum.

Web frameworks

The winner of this category is Spring MVC, which managed to outshine Node.js and Play Framework. Interestingly enough, the new MVC framework which was originally intended for Java EE 8 now belongs to the community. Oracle revealed that Management, JMS, and MVC ranked low in the Java EE community survey results (the ranking supports their proposal to withdraw new APIs in these areas from Java EE 8) but our respondents seem to have a different opinion about Java EE – MVC.

Microservices/ Dev frameworks

Spring Boot is the obvious winner of this year’s most popular microservices/dev frameworks, which managed to convince 64.6 percent of the respondents to use it in 2017. Akka, Vert.x and ReactiveX also received a lot of attention — unlike newcomer Lagom.

If we look at last year’s numbers, we will see that Spring Boot was still respondents’ number one choice, followed by Java EE 7, Node.js, Akka and Vert.x.

That’s a wrap. These were the most popular frameworks this year.

In the next round of results, we will reveal the tools that you intend to use in 2017: from Continuous Delivery and automation tools to DevOps and containers.

JAXenter.com and JAXenter.de readers had about a month to weigh in on how this year’s technology trends should look like. The survey was organized into ten sections:

Languages

UI Technologies

Web Frameworks

Microservices / Dev Frameworks

Cloud Platforms / Technologies

Continuous Delivery & Automatization

DevOps, Container & Service Discovery

Data Storage & Processing

Software Architecture

More & mixed things

More than 900 people have filled out to the survey — we’d like to thank you all for your interest and for allowing us to paint a very representative picture of the technology trends the Java community is interested in this year.